1st proofs UNCORRECTED PROOFS © JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY Chapter 5 The grammar of conjunctive and disjunctive coordination in Iraqw * Maarten Mous University of Leiden 1. Introduction 2. Basic properties of nee ‘and’ and laqáa ‘or’ 3. Coordination in noun phrases 3.1 Coordinated noun phrase as a unit 3.2 Coordinated modifiers as a unit 4. Agreement 5. Word category and origin 1. Introduction The purpose of this article is to present the grammatical properties of nee ‘and, with’ and laqáa ‘or’, which are the elements that are used in coordination in Iraqw: nee for conjunctive coordination and laqáa for disjunctive coordination. In addition to their coordinating functions, they have a number of preposition-like functions as well. In § 2 I discuss the basic properties of these two coordinators; in § 3 I show that modifiers can be coordinated but that the coordinated noun phrase does not so easily form a unit under modification. In § 4 I discuss the agreement behavior of coordinated noun phrases. In §5 it is argued that both coordinators belong to a limited word class of prepositions, while there is no evidence for a word class of conjunctions. I also suggest that nee is of Bantu origin. This paper was inspired by the overview on coordination presented in Haspelmath (to appear). Examples come partly from my grammar (Mous 1993) and from the extensive text collection in Berger and Kiessling (1998). *This article was written during a research period at the Max Planck Institute for Evolution- ary Anthropology in Leipzig. I would like to thank my colleagues there for stimulating discussions.